Back when I was finishing high school in the late 70’s some of my friends graduated early. It was discouraged but you could skip your senior year by taking summer school. I know you had to take senior English and I think some other class. You got your diploma early.
The students that definitely weren’t interested in college took that option. Many of them went to the Vo Tech school studied welding or auto mechanics.Others went directly into jobs they found.
I went ahead and took my Senior year. I’d guess that 90% of the students did too. Only a few graduated early.
I’m not sure if this option still exists. They’re more fussy about education these days.
When I went to high school it was a five-year program (grades 9-13), but only two subjects, english and math, actually had five years worth of courses to take. (i.e. ENG1A1, ENG2A1, ENG3A1, &c, where ENG(N-1)A1 is a prerequisite for ENG(N)A1).
It was relatively common, if you could take two englishes or maths in a year, to finish up in four years instead of five, and match the rest of the provinces in getting out in four years. A few years after I left, they finally ditched the fifth year altogether.
You can do that at the high school where I teach, but it’s tougher than it used to be: years ago, schools usually required 4 English, 3 math, 3 social studies, and 2 science. These days you have to have 4 of each, plus assorted elective requirements. So you really have to start early.
For whatever reason, almost all the students I have known who have done it were African immigrants.
In the early 80s, many in my class, including mysel,f graduated in December of senior year, took college credit courses at the local community college through May and went away to school that August with up to 15 college credits behind us. It was the “thing to do” at the time. Get the Freshman basics out of the way if you weren’t a social butterfly and didn’t intend on participating in the senior year hoopla.
I think schools require more elective credits to graduate these days which would make it harder. All we had to do was double up on English and take either a accelerated math or science that was offered. (If I remember correctly, the latter two were only for those accepted to university already. I think English was the only course necessary to graduate).
Mine didn’t openly offer it to students, but one did it anyways. (It might have been a special rule just for him. He’s now, AFAIK, the then-guidance counselor’s son-in-law.) It would have been pretty easy, though. I only took two classes my senior year that were absolutely necessary to graduate, and it would have only been one had they let students take a social studies class in their junior year.
Technically, I think you could. You needed 4 years of English to graduate, and the school discouraged people from taking more than one English class at once because they frequently organized things like class photos by English class. It was convenient to require everyone to take English every semester and it usually required quite a fight to get in to more than one English class at once, though I know a couple people who managed. If you could manage to convince the guidance counselors to allow you to take AP Composition and Classics at the same time because you were such an enthusiastic student, it would probably be possible to graduate in December, especially if you took a couple summer school classes. If you approached it as “I want to graduate early,” you’d probably be refused. It was more common to simply get your GED.
Back then, in Spain it was possible to be one or two years in advance of your age (you needed higher grades than other kids, to stay there); it was possible to finish HS “early” if you were one of those (we didn’t have any “graduation” stuff, though), but usually the year(s) they’d skipped was in primary school. The two girls I know who did this skipped 1st and 1st+2nd, respectively.
Now it’s not possible, apparently admiting that some kids’ peers are actually those born a bit earlier or a bit later is shameful or something.
My high school had two semesters a year so it was possible to graduate a year early if you wanted to. I was a little more laid back than that but I did only need 3 credits in my senior year so I took them all in first semester and finished school in January.
I went to two high schools, one which had two semesters during the normal school year, plus summer school for those who needed to repeat a class, and the second one which had three trimesters per normal school year, plus the summer school classes.
I took the regular load at the first school, until I was a sophomore in the spring semester. Then, for various reasons, I moved from my parents’ house in Missouri to my grandparents’ house in Texas, and started taking as many classes as I could each trimester. I wasn’t allowed to have a job until I graduated, so I figured that I might as well get high school out of the way. I was able to graduate after the first trimester of my senior year. I was ALMOST eligible to graduate in my junior year.
Looking back, I wish that I’d taken the opportunity to take advanced math and science courses, but I was eager to start college and get a job.
I’m not familiar with the graduate early plan but in the 70’s I took a couple of classes that counted for graduation and as college credit. I think I started off college with 15 credits - at that time a quarter’s worth. In the long run it didn’t make a difference with getting through college. I ended up dropping out at the end of freshman year, worked for a few and when I got back in needed all prereqs for my program anyway.
I wasn’t possible at my school. Why, because you need to take gym in 9th, 10th, and 12th grade (in 11th you took health instead). It didn’t matter if you took gym in 11th grade; that didn’t “count” for some reason and you had to take gym again in 12th grade. I knew one guy who was offered dual enrollment at a local college (basically doing his freshman year of college and senior of HS at the same time) if only the school district would sign off on it.
The principl, superindentant, and school board all absolutely refused. They all kept saying over and over again that he had to had to take the HS’s gym class. :dubious: They would give him credit for the college English & Math classes, but no the PE classes. At one point his parents tried to work out a deal were’d he’d enroll at the college, take all his other classes there, and only take gym at the HS (45 minutes, every other day for the school year), but that was denied on “logistical” grounds.
I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that they’d lose out on a years worth of per capita state funding. :rolleyes:
I graduated halfway through my senior year in Dec. '02. However, the school wouldn’t let me graduate a full year early, so the one semester of senior year I did was blow-off classes and co-op. I got out of school by noon every day. Worked full time (as I did all through college), took a course at a community college, and entered university with several credits already earned.
Leaving high school at the end of the winter term is becoming more and more of a trend of high school football players that have collegiate scholarships. They then enroll at their college in the Spring semester allowing them to participate in Spring football drills, etc. and vie for those starting positions, and puts themselves a leg up on the other freshmen starting in the summer.
My high school wouldn’t allow early graduation, and I’m not sure why. At the end of my junior year, I was only lacking the requisite senior English and Social Studies classes, and I wanted to do them in the summer and be done with it, but TPTB would have nothing of that. And it was actually good that I attended my senior year. Apart from taking Physics that year, which sparked my love of science, I also got to go to Paris and Rome with the school choir to participate in a choral festival. I’m glad I didn’t miss that. And really, the worst part of senior year was the team taught Honors English/Social Studies - both teachers were barely adequate and the classes were pretty much worthless to me. But Physics and Trig rocked!
My school didn’t allow it when I was a student (1983-1987). If they had, I would have jumped at the chance because I hated high school so much. A few years after I passed through, they started offering that option to students with good grades. They had to start taking high-school classes in the 8th grade and were bussed in for half a day from the middle school.
My high school did in the mid-70s when my sister was there. The only class she needed 4 credits in to graduate was English, so she took summer school English after her Junior year and was done.
By the time I was there in the early 80s, it either wasn’t an option or wasn’t spoken of.
I was so pissed off that I couldn’t graduate early (late 80s in Pennsylvania). Apparently there was a state law that mandated 4 years of English and Phys Ed. I had more than enough credits by the end of my junior year, but there was no reward for taking classes instead of study halls.
I took a full load senior year…but I did end up taking the most valuable class I ever took that year…personal typing. An absolute godsend and the beginning of the PC age.